"Singapore will pay people to read in a government initiative aimed at mitigating the superficiality of online content and..."

"... encouraging 'curious minds, deep thinkers and informed citizen.' The city state has launched a programme called ReadSG under which people are encouraged to log their daily reading on an app in return for virtual 'coins,' redeemable for cash. The idea is inspired by the goal of walking 10,000 steps a day.... The sums of money in play are small and no one is going to get rich from reading in Singapore, although its organisers hope that the 'gamification' element and the rewards offered by the programme will motivate participants.... Someone who logged 15 minutes a day for a year would be entitled to S$7.30 (£4.25)."

I'm reading "The city that pays people to put down the phone and read a book Singapore is seeking to turn the page on ‘doomscrolling’ with a system in which readers can log their progress in exchange for cash" (London Times).

So... get off your phone... get on your phone... which is it?

Just 3 TikToks to tide you over. I was highly selective! Let me know what you liked best.

1. Just how excellent can an airport be?

2. The exquisite subtlety of the dish towel.

3. Mr. Horse Girl.

"Singapore’s otters are... testament to Singapore’s reforestation and ­anti-pollution efforts. When the otters resettled here in 2014..."

"... they returned to clean waterways with schools of fish untouched by predators for decades. The city has since implemented an ambitious plan to interweave green and urban ­areas, including creating wildlife corridors so that every resident will live within a 10-minute walk of a park by 2030. 'It doesn’t have to be a concrete jungle,' said Anbarasi Boopal, the co-CEO of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society, Singapore’s wildlife rescue center. 'Singapore has a huge potential to be a new model for where greenery, animals and people can learn to live in close proximity... There will be resistance. We are so used to having everything presented to us so nicely.... I tell people, we cannot train the animals. I cannot train the monkey. But I can train you.'"

From "Otters are taking over Singapore" (WaPo).

Would you co-exist with otters?

"Singapore has trialled patrol robots that blast warnings at people engaging in 'undesirable social behaviour'..."

"This includes smoking in prohibited areas, improperly parking bicycles, and breaching coronavirus social-distancing rules. During a recent patrol, one of the 'Xavier' robots wove its way through a housing estate and stopped in front of a group of elderly residents watching a chess match. 'Please keep one-metre distancing, please keep to five persons per group,' a robotic voice blared out, as a camera on top of the machine trained its gaze on them.... Digital rights activist Lee Yi Ting said...  'It all contributes to the sense people ... need to watch what they say and what they do in Singapore to a far greater extent than they would in other countries'...."

From "‘Dystopian world’: Singapore patrol robots stoke fears of surveillance state/Trial of robots to police ‘undesirable’ behaviour such as smoking or breaching social-distancing rules" (The Guardian).

Kamala Harris is fully aware that as she stands there today that the eyes of many around the world are on Afghanistan...

 

"We are laser-focused on the task at hand," she says, her arms flapping nervously, as if she would like to fly away. 

Last week on this blog, we were talking about comic actors doing characters. Remember? I thought a particular woman who was being made fun of might herself be a comedienne doing a character. 

Freeman Hunt said, "But you usually try to take it just over the edge, amplify it a little. Therein lies the humor." 

I responded, "Some of the best comic actors do not amplify it. Think of Charles Grodin and Phil Hartman." I was quite sure I'd heard a brilliant comic actor — who? — say that his trick was to copy the person exactly. Don't amplify. And watching Harris, just now — at 7:00 to 7:15 — I thought: That's it, that's what you copy. Copy that exactly. The words, the eye movements, the pauses, the arm jerks — everything. Resist all amplification. That would be hilarious. Painful too, but hilarious.

Maybe it has something to do with our socialization and inhibition. We're polite enough to refrain from laughing at real people trying to get through whatever they've got going for them, using whatever talent they have. But that restraint takes its toll, and when a comic actor takes the place of that real person, what a relief. It's finally okay to laugh.

But a comedian stepping up and giving us a chance to laugh at Kamala Harris won't bring much relief. She really is too dangerous. She's about to become President, and here she is on her Southeast Asian trip to show off her readiness to become President, and she does not project gravitas or even minimal sincerity. She seems afraid and insecure. The President is supposed to protect us, not require our protection. 

UPDATE: Here's the press conference from yesterday — video, transcript. Asked whether she was "satisfied" with what was being done in Afghanistan —  "not the decision itself, but the operational steps that were taken" — she repeated her one talking point — the administration is "focused" on "the task at hand" (evacuating people) — and swiveled to the fact that she was standing there in Singapore:

Please please please love our airport.

Is Singapore trying too hard?

"Trump is simply not experienced enough or temperamentally inclined to handle the complexity of nuclear negotiations or issues as complex as those associated with the long history of the Koreas."

Said David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, quoted in "Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un likely to meet alone at Singapore summit" (USA Today).

Also, given the track record of North Korea and Trump to "dissemble," Rothkopf said that "it is a minimum best practice to have a witness to the conversation."

But if Trump brings in his witness, Kim will have his witness. And doesn't Trump know far more than Kim about how to deal one-on-one with another man? Trump has spent a lifetime doing that, but what has Kim had to do, given the adulation he's received and his propensity to resort to killing anyone who could challenge him? And, by the way, Kim is only 34 years old. In years alone, Trump has far more experience.

And yet the Peace scholar thinks Trump is "simply not experienced enough." Depends on what you mean by experience, but clearly Kim is far less experienced. Isn't it smart to put Kim at this immense disadvantage? Trump means to pull him in, to give him a big American hug and to warm up this young fan of America.

ADDED: I see in the comments, my phrase "this young fan of America" is being questioned. My source is Dennis Rodman:

Rodman, who brands Mr Kim a “friend of for life”, said... Mr Kim, who he dubs the “little guy”, was a massive fan of American music from the 1980's. “When he’s around his people, he’s just like anybody else. He jokes and loves playing basketball, table tennis, pool,” he told DuJour magazine. ...They love American ’80s music. They do karaoke to it. He has this 13-piece girls band with violins. He gets a mic and they play the whole time. He loves the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. Oldies. When I first went, the live band only played two songs for four hours: the theme songs from Rocky and Dallas.... He can’t say it enough. He wants to talk to him to try to open that door a little bit. He’s saying that he doesn’t want to bomb anybody. He said, ‘I don’t want to kill Americans.’ He loves Americans.”

ALSO: Look at where Trump and Kim are meeting, on a resort island, Sentosa, next to Singapore. One reason to choose that place is that it can be closed off for security, but it also vividly tantalizes with American-style attractions:

The island, which is nearly two square miles in size... features 17 hotels and luxury resorts, private beaches, two golf courses, a casino, a Madame Tussauds museum, a water theme park, Universal Studios Singapore, and the largest Merlion statue....

More about Sentosa at Wikipedia, with lots of pictures, a longer list of attractions. Here's the aerial view of the fun-packed place:


CC by Chensiyuan.

When I look at that picture, what I hear in my head is "Optimistic Voices" (from "The Wizard of Oz"), you know that song, perhaps not by its title. It's: “You're out of the woods/You're out of the dark/You're out of the night/Step into the sun/Step into the light/Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place/On the face of the earth or the sky/Hold onto your breath/Hold onto your heart/Hold onto your hope/March up to the gate and bid it open... OPEN."

"Kim Jong-un arrived in Singapore... on an Air China jet on Sunday afternoon, local time, after his longest trip overseas as head of state..."

"... amid huge security precautions on the city-state island. Two decoy flights were also dispatched. He was driven into the city-state in a convoy of more than 20 vehicles, including an ambulance, with North Korean television cameramen filming his progress through the sunroofs. A large limousine with a North Korean flag was seen surrounded by other black vehicles with tinted windows as it sped through the city's streets to the St. Regis Hotel... 'Welcomed Chairman Kim Jong Un, who has just arrived in Singapore,' [Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian] Balakrishnan said on Twitter, alongside a picture of him shaking hands with Kim wearing glasses and a dark Maoist suit."

Reports The Daily Mail in "Bring it UN! Kim Jong-un arrives in Singapore on an Air China flight two days before historic summit with Trump - after North Korea dispatched his private jet on dummy flight as a security diversion."

Let me digress, because I'm feeling a little distanced from politics, though of course, I hope for the best at the big summit, and I do see the other Trump-and-foreign-policy story, "Trump Refuses to Sign G-7 Statement and Calls Trudeau ‘Weak.'"

I'm the sort of person who reads the passage quoted above and the first thing I want to talk about is "Vivian Balakrishnan... him..."... a man named Vivian... Vivian, the man's name:

Vivian... is a given name... derived from a Latin name of the Roman Empire period, masculine Vivianus and feminine Viviana, which survived into modern use because it is the name of two early Christian female martyrs as well as of a male saint and bishop....

The Latin name Vivianus is recorded from the 1st century. It is ultimately related to the adjective vivus "alive"... The latinate given name Vivianus was of limited popularity in the medieval period in reference to Saint Vivianus, a 5th-century bishop of Saintes...

The name was brought to England with the Norman invasion, and is occasionally recorded in England in the 12th and 13th centuries. The masculine given name appears with greater frequency in the early modern period. The spelling Vivian was historically used only as a masculine name, but in the 19th century was also given to girls and was a unisex name until the early part of the 20th century; since the mid 20th century, it has been almost exclusively given as a feminine name in the United States...

Here's a short article on Saint Vivianus:

Saint Vivianus (Vicratius) was one of the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste who refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, and suffered for Christ around 320....

A company of forty Cappadocians.... was stationed in the Armenian city of Sebaste under the command of the pagan Agricola. When these soldiers refused to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods, Agricola locked them up in prison.... The holy soldiers were lined up and thrown into a [freezing cold] lake near the city, and a guard was stationed on the shore to prevent them from coming out of the water. In order to break the will of the martyrs, a warm bath house was set up on the shore...

In the morning, the torturers were surprised to see that the martyrs were still alive.... They led the soldiers out of the water and broke their legs.... They put the bodies of the martyrs on a cart and committed them to fire....

It's a date: Singapore, June 12th.

The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th. We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2018

"[Amos] Yee’s arrest doesn't just underscore his complaints about Singapore’s backwardness on rights and freedom."

"It shows the country’s dire need for cultural education through intelligent dissent."

In the days after Yee’s arrest, a slew of local celebrities, including three Singaporean starlet types, were interviewed about his videos on national TV. In sequences depressing to watch, they all sided with the state. “If you say that, ‘Oh, people can say whatever they want, all the time,’ then what about those people who are listening?” Joshua Tan, a young actor, said. Well, what about them? The suggestion that citizens should withhold political criticism for fear of offense is preposterous—far more embarrassing to Singapore than any videos by Yee could be.

Amos Yee is only 17, and he's been arrested under the Protection from Harassment Act, apparently for hurting religious feelings when he likened Lee Kuan Yew — a dead Singaporean leader — to Jesus Christ. Here's the video, in which you can see how very charming Yee is. (Some of the language is NSFW.)

"A 'Virtuous vanilla' lip balm and a 'Get Tight with Christ' hand and body cream, featuring a picture of Christ flanked by two adoring women."

Products from a cosmetics line called Looking Good for Jesus, withdrawn in Singapore after Catholics complain. What is the nature of the complaint? I've seen plenty of fancy oil paintings in prestigious museums that pictured Christ flanked by two adoring women.

ADDED: In case you want to compare the image to classy artworks you've gazed upon, here:



TYPO FIXED: I did not mean to write "classic artworks."